


the path of a star

by kiden



Category: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake - Fandom
Genre: Aerith POV, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23775988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiden/pseuds/kiden
Summary: “I know,” Aerith says, softly now, letting them guide her along the backstreets to her house. “You always come. But you never stay.”
Relationships: Aerith Gainsborough/Cloud Strife
Comments: 18
Kudos: 119
Collections: Umbrella & Nailbat | Recs





	the path of a star

This time, the Turks catch up with her just outside Wall Market. It’s late - three or four in the morning - and Aerith has lost her jacket, she’s soaked in sweat and covered in glitter and it feels like a sunrise to see them. She takes Rude and Reno by their arms, pulling them both close, until she’s nestled between them. They don’t pull away the way they used to. Aerith doesn’t bother wondering anymore what they think about her. 

“Let’s get breakfast,” she says, resting her head against Rude’s arm. “Eggs and chips and lots of _bacon._ Real bacon. I’m sure you can find it, can’t you?” 

Reno huffs, blows the red wisps of hair out of his face. Aerith holds him to her side a bit tighter. 

“Do you ever _wear_ those goggles?” She giggles. “I’ve never seen you wear them. Not even once!” 

Rude shakes a little. Oh, the way it feels to make him _laugh._ They aren’t bad. She knows that. Knows it much better than they themselves do. And sure, she will never get them to breakfast, or to stay for dinner, no matter how many times she asks, but she must still ask. Everyday she can only try to do all she can. 

“You’re so _weird_ ,” Reno says. “You know we’re trying to... kidnap you, right? We’re not your buddies.” 

“Oh, yes you are,” Aerith sings. “You’re going to bring me home. You’ll never take me to Shinra. Don’t you know that by now?” 

“You’re drunk,” Reno snaps. But he slips his arm around her waist, to hold her up when she pitches forward dangerously. Tripping over her own feet. “You don’t -” 

“Let’s get you home,” Rude says. Reno makes a sharp, disgruntled noise, and his fingers curl against her hip. But he can’t get the words out to argue. 

“Yeah, yeah - we can’t, you know, bring you in like this. But we’ll be back. Soon.” 

“I know,” Aerith says, softly now, letting them guide her along the backstreets to her house. “You always come. But you never stay.” 

There isn’t enough sunlight in her garden for the flowers to grow the way they do. Some… but certainly not enough. But they grow regardless, the way they always do, unfurling and stretching upwards, around her feet, shins, past her knees. One day they’ll reach up and choke the life out of her. Reno and Rude follow a few steps behind Aerith, just close enough to catch her from falling into the water if she drunkenly loses her balance. They watch her pick flowers. They trail her to the door. 

Under the steel sky, the lamplight, the stars that hold no constellations, Reno blushes when she tucks a gladiolus behind his ear. 

“Goodnight, boys,” she whispers. “See you in a few days.”

They stand in the garden long after she closes the door. 

* * *

Aerith is helping out at the cafe the morning it happens. Oh, the _grief_ that rushes through her buckles her knees. Her skin feels dry in a way she’s never experienced, burning and hot. The tips of her fingers are sandy. There’s love that swells, as big as it’s ever been, and when she thinks she can’t hold it anymore, that it will overflow, it stills and goes silent inside her. Flows back from the place it came from, crashing and receding like a wave. 

A field of tilled soil. Seeds being sown. 

The first flower of spring, growing on the bed of winter’s death. 

* * *

She always dreams of him. Big, blue eyes, green with mako, the spirit of the planet flowing through him, flowing through her, in an endless loop. She cannot see the rest of him, but can feel his warm hands, his mouth on hers, the way he holds on to her. He’s both and neither of them. Aerith loves him, over and over again. 

He falls through the roof of the church into her flowers. 

It will hurt less if he never loves her back. 

* * *

She doesn’t have _time_ with Tifa, the way she wants to. No slow walks through the back streets. No afternoon spent picking flowers. It will come later, she hopes, but now all the wasted years feel so heavy. Tifa takes her hand, catches her when she falls - just as Cloud did - and trusts her, with no reason to, blindly, unequivocally with the most precious of things. 

Aerith holds Marlene tightly to her as the helicopter banks around the Sector 7 pillar. Maybe they will see each other again. Maybe they won’t. So much is different now, and changing every moment. Things that felt certain for so long are murky and feel unknowable. Rough waters. Waves that crash against the shore but never recede. 

“Don’t be scared,” she whispers to the crown of Marlene’s head. “You’ll be okay now.” 

In that blue-green flash of light, Marlene already knows. 

The chopper sets down just down the path from her house and Tseng won’t let her go home, not even once, not even if it’s the last time, but she’s allowed to walk to the gate with Marlene. Sets her down, straightens out the hems of both their pink dresses. 

She’s going to miss all the children _so much._

Aerith’s knees hit the dirt hard and she takes Marlene’s hand. 

“Will my daddy be okay, too?” 

“Yes,” Aerith says firmly.

Wedge was alive. Saving people. 

“And Tifa?” 

Why did the Whispers allow it?

“Of course,” she says, softer this time. “I will make sure of it. Send them home to you safe and sound.” 

Marlene nods, swallows thickly, and casts an unsure look at Tseng, who is looming large and shadowed behind Aerith’s back. Tseng won’t hurt her, won’t hurt Marlene, or any of them, and Aerith knows that. Maybe Marlene knows that now, too. 

“You too?” 

The storm is growing. The water is too muddy. 

“My heart will find you when it’s all over,” Aerith says. 

“Shhh,” Marlene says. 

She presses her finger against her lips until Aerith nods and mimics the gesture. Elena takes Marlene by the hand and the gate swings closed behind them and then they’re gone. She’ll like it there, Aerith thinks, _it’s more green than she’s ever seen._

Tseng lays a hand on her shoulder and Aerith wishes Reno and Rude were the ones bringing her in. There’s no warmth in Tseng she can find, no matter how deeply she digs. Maybe someday. But not yet. 

His hand is cold as ice. 

“Nobody is going to hurt you, Aerith,” he says, leading her back to the chopper. “You’re precious to Shinra.” 

She climbs into the helicopter and turns to him. There’s lightning in the distance. Skipping in flashes of blue and white. Aerith thinks of the thunder of Rude’s concealed laughter against her side. She yells over the whirl of the helicopter, “You know that’s not true.”

And however he responds is lost on liftoff. 

* * *

But she loves him, and she doesn’t know how to hide it. 

They touch and his eyes open. He falls and Aerith plucks petals out of his hair as he stirs, waits while he pulls himself up. Oh, _this_ is who he is. Brave and awkward and moody and bone-achingly tender. He embarrasses so easily, she can’t help but to tease him. His eyes the color of the real sky, the forests out beyond the wall, all of the big, wide world there inside him. Aerith wants to run away and run towards it, thrill and terror and love and regret, all blooming inside her. 

Cloud loves her already, because he loved her before, and it would hurt less if he didn’t. If she didn’t. But she cannot stop them from tumbling forward. There are wounds inside him Aerith put there, but Cloud still tries. For her, without knowing why. High-fives her, unsure, flushed and mortified. He tries. 

He dreams of her, _with her,_ comes to find her.

She would fall in love with him a thousand times more. 

* * *

Cloud takes her hand in the Wasteland. 

One day she will tell him who she loved before him, that Cloud loved him too, and how they’re bound to him as much as to each other. That there are threads between them, _all of them -_ Tifa and Barret, Red, friends they haven’t met yet, and ones they’ve already lost. They all go back to the planet at the end. Eventually every road leads home. 

_I’m searching for you._

Maybe there is no _Capital D, Destiny_ for them anymore. It’s difficult to see. It feels like _freedom_ though, his hand in hers. It feels like the first time. 

Like it can be different. 

The Lifestream is a river that flows in all directions, through all times, carving out new paths. And love passes, for the both of them, on a westbound wind. Aerith holds Cloud’s hand tightly. 

_But... I’m right here._

“Are you okay?” he asks. 

“Yes,” Aerith says. “I think so.” 

_I’ve found you, at last._

**Author's Note:**

> oml


End file.
